Brad Whitewood Sr.,At Close Range, 1985.- Itís a plain old crime movie about a ring of tractor thieves in Pennsylvania. Then this guyís sons (played by Brothers Penn) decide to freelance with a bunch of their stupid buddies (including Crispin Glover and Evil Ed) and get their dumbasses caught after the DA has already been building a case against paranoid Brad Sr.,. Thatís when motherfuckers start getting whisked away into the woods in the middle of the night. You can guess the rest. Probably Walkenís most menacing role. I mean even Frank White had his altruistic side.

I fucking love that movie and I totally agree. For my money that is Walken's most menacing role. The guy is just scary, grimy and worst of all unscrupulous.

Impressive list you compiled there man. But there is one guy you left out:

And shame on me for not including "The Howling" & "Silver Bullet" in my 80's horror list. I actually enjoy "Silver Bullet" more than I do "American Werewolf In London". Sacrilege I know but I have to be honest..

With the 80's I think frankly there were just more horror movies made than there were in the 70's & you can attribute that to the home video boom of the time. This is why I think the decade gets a bad wrap in terms of quality. There's just a gluttonous amount of films to sift through but if you look at the list I posted of 80's titles you'll see there's alot more than cheese there. There are bonafide, serious horror classics to be seen. And for my money moreso than the 70's.

You make a good point about the video boom attributing to quantity and I agree the 80's has many classic horror movies, if they are better than the 70's well that's just down to opinion. Although I find it easier to define "landmark" films rather than "classic" which is why I left out other 70's flicks like The Hills have eyes, Black Christmas, the crazies, long weekend, zombi etc. etc. As landmark I view as cinematic greats whose success undoubtedly influenced the genre.

Either way both were great decades that I love and I'll be interested to see how the 90's onwards will fair in this list as I've been critical about the lack of great releases since the "golden age".

I fucking love that movie and I totally agree. For my money that is Walken's most menacing role. The guy is just scary, grimy and worst of all unscrupulous.

Impressive list you compiled there man. But there is one guy you left out:

Yeah, I’ve actually only seen that once so that’s why that particular bastard would’ve totally slipped my mind. Good catch. I need to check it out again the next time it pops up on cable. Even though not everything needs a downbeat realistic gritty ending where the veteran criminal outsleazes everyone else, I was still taken aback that this mean old career bastard got taken out by Sherriff Marge from Fargo when it was all said and done.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I finally saw Blood Simple so basically I always thought of M. Emmett as that guy from Harry And The Hendersons (and a bunch of other stuff where he was a harmless curmudgeon) and constantly confused him with Ned Beatty. I’m sure he’s played quite a few other bastards (his episode of Tales From The Crypt) but I always thought of him as more of an old grouch than the devious treacherous greedy slimebag he played in Blood Simple. Great performance.

If we extend the magnificent bastard conversation to the entire decade of the 80’s, you have to include Ramrod too; still the most vicious on-screen pimp ever. I don’t know if you could get all the way to 25 as good as the bad guys I listed but it would be fun trying to narrow it down to a top ten from a list of 25 or 30 for the best of the 80’s baddest.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sea Hag

And shame on me for not including "The Howling" & "Silver Bullet" in my 80's horror list. I actually enjoy "Silver Bullet" more than I do "American Werewolf In London". Sacrilege I know but I have to be honest..

As for Silver Bullet, I’ve definitely seen it more times than The Howling (which I actually own on DVD but have only ever popped in once or twice) due to it being in regular rotation on cable and for that matter as many times as An American Werewolf In London. Even if it’s just on in the background most of the time, I still know it like the back of my hand. The thing with Silver Bullet is that the reminiscing sister voice-overs make it almost Disney-type corny shit. Then again it has plenty of awesome un-Disney shit like the drunk railroad worker getting his head chopped clean off.

Make no mistake about one thing though. While I may shit on that overgrown overstuffed teddy bear I mean werewolf (from Silver Bullet) now that thing scared me shitless when I was a young’un watching it on video for the first time.

Speaking of werewolves, I’ve noticed several recent reviews pointing out how much better trashy classic The Beast Within would’ve been if they’d just made Dick Jones's bastard kid a werewolf instead of a damn mantis man or whatever the fuck he was supposed to be. I mean even the title lends itself to being a werewolf feature.

Then again that makes me wonder if Hollyweird had already shot their wad on iconic werewolf designs. Winston’s wolfman was the next great one we’d get. Then again, the mantis man didn’t really sprout until about 15-20 minutes left of The Beast Within. All the kills before then were kind of generic shit because I guess the kid hadn’t fully undergone whatever metamorphosis shit he was going through. Plus there would've been some swank implied werewolf rape. Ah, what could've been....

I can't fault anybody for preferring another werewolf movie over an An American Werewolf In London as it worked better as a black comedy than straight-up horror.

Since Dave can articulate the merits of that movie way better than I ever could, just head on over and let his review sell you on it. Donít be worried about the spoilers warning heading. Itís just revealing that Paul White (Keith) is the killer, which every piece of artwork and really every review Iíve ever seen touting this movie didnít bother avoiding.

Hereís the YouTube link again.

I donít know when this is gonna pop up on DVD so you might as well check this out while itís still up.